Groups seek female candidates

Staci Appel, a stay-at-home mother of four, was used to being a campaign contributor, not a candidate. So it took her by surprise one Sunday afternoon when a state senator called and made a very different request.

"I thought he was calling to ask for money," recalls Appel, 40, a former financial consultant who had some involvement in local Democratic politics.

"I was cleaning the kitchen, and I kept on waiting for the dollar amount, and all of a sudden I heard, 'We'd like you to consider running for the Senate.' ... It was time to stop cleaning and start listening."

Now, Appel is vying for a seat in the Iowa state Senate, and her election could tip control of the chamber from Republican to Democratic.

A number of groups are pushing female candidates for state-level offices across the USA. The goal is to bring different perspectives to the political debate, draw disenchanted voters to the polls and widen the pool of female candidates. The percentage of female state legislators has hovered near 22% for the past decade.

"They're seeing that women are not running," says Gilda Morales of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "And so they're actually going in and trying to not only support but train women as candidates."

Some of the organizations involved in the effort are:

*EMILY's List, a national political action committee that backs women who are abortion rights supporters and Democrats, has a 10-year plan to focus on 16 states where organizers believe women have the best chance of being elected. The group also is supporting candidates in 17 other states, and since 2001 has helped 238 women get elected, spokeswoman Ramona Oliver says.

*In Pennsylvania, where 48 women are running for statewide office, the bipartisan Pennsylvania Women's Campaign Fund has donated $10,000 this election year and trained four candidates.

*Georgia's WIN List, dedicated to electing women who are Democrats and abortion rights supporters, endorsed 47 women this year, and raised more than $40,000, Chairwoman Mary Long says.

"We really need to get enough women in all of these positions, from county board to the Legislature on up, to have a permanent pipeline to power in this country," says Marie Wilson, president and founder of the White House Project, a non-partisan group focused on expanding women's leadership.

Female lawmakers often seek office for different reasons than men do, says Morales. "They're not running for the power of the office, but to get something done."

At the start of 2006, 1,667 out of 7,382 state legislators were women, says Katie Fischer, policy associate for the Women's Legislative Network of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Women often need to be asked to run, Fischer says. Such was the case with Lauren Benedict, a Democrat who is challenging Republican incumbent Allen Freeman for a seat in the Georgia House.

An attorney, Benedict, 34, has taken community and church leadership roles but didn't think of pursuing political office until colleagues and friends suggested it.

"I think I was moving toward that step and perhaps not realizing it until someone asked," she says.

Staci Appel adds that she understands why some women decline to seek office.

"It's a lot of work," says Appel, who campaigns seven days a week and adds that it would be even more difficult if she didn't have full-time help at home and a husband who pitches in. "I think that would be extremely hard for a number of women not in my same circumstances."

Yet the ability to juggle various tasks and the particular role many women play in the family are qualities that distinguish them as lawmakers, several politicians and political experts say, enabling them to build bridges across the partisan divide and champion issues such as education.

"Women seem to bring a different kind of perspective," says Delaware state Sen. Dori Connor, a Republican currently seeking her fourth term, who is pushing human trafficking legislation and has worked on environmental reforms and children's issues.

Connor who ran for and won her husband's seat after he died in 1997, tells women who say they could never be politicians that they already are.

"I say if you go to church you're in politics," Connor says. If "you belong to the PTA, you're in politics. It's just learning a different way to problem solve."

Preparation and support are key for female candidates, political activists say. Not only does Georgia's WIN List raise money for candidates who support abortion rights, but "I think it's important to call them, send them an e-mail, check on them to see what we can do," Long says.

And the White House Project provides leadership training. Several hundred women have gone through "debate boot camp" and been trained in fundraising and other aspects of campaigning.

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